A wealth of resources

Evanston's assets help fuel boom times

From her living room, Evanston Mayor Lorraine Morton can hear the sounds of change taking place in Evanston.

"There's construction work up and down my block," she said.

"One owner has done a complete restoration of his home. Other homes have been expanded. Across the street, one owner added a second floor to his home, and one developer bought three homes down the street and completely remodeled them."

The work up and down her street reflects what many neighborhoods in Evanston are undergoing.

"For the last 10 years, I'd say, we've been in the [midst] of a revitalization in different sections of the city," Morton said. This is most evident downtown, where hundreds of millions of dollars in investment has taken place, city officials say.

"There have been new apartments, new condominiums, new restaurants, new retail," Morton said. "There's been just plain new everything."

Not a `suburb' any more

Key to this rebirth are the many resources for those who live and work there, Morton and other officials say.

"All of the different resources and services that one finds in Evanston do two things. It makes it a very livable town and it keeps Evanston's strong sense of identity--especially its diversity--going strong," said Morton, mayor since 1993 and a resident since 1953.

"Evanston's characteristics are not those of the classic suburb," said Jonathan Perman, the executive director of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce.

"In fact, we've banned the word `suburb' from the lexicon of Evanston. For example, more than 40 percent of the people who live in Evanston also work in the town. Compare that to the typical bedroom community in the North Shore."

In addition, "people are more involved in this town than people are usually involved in their towns," he said. "There are highly vibrant community, business and religious organizations because people are so invested into this town."

"There are wonderful volunteers here," Morton said. "There are so many things going on in the city. As far as resources, the volunteers and the groups pick up where the city and Northwestern University and our businesses leave off."

"I believe what makes Evanston unique is the amount of resources and the social service programs we provide," said Ald. Joe Kent (5th), 34, a lifelong resident.

For example, said Kent, a 3rd-grade teacher at Washington Elementary School, there is a strong public school system. "We have one central high school that all the kids feed into. That speaks soundly of the character of Evanston."

That character, say those who live and work in Evanston, is easily defined.

Diversity is key

For example, there is the town's diverse ethnic and class makeup.

"This is an amazingly diverse place," said Janice Klein, director of the Mitchell Museum of the American Indianat Kendall College. The museum has been open for nearly a quarter-century.

Located in a two-story brick building at 2600 Central Park Ave., the museum is a repository for more than 10,000 objects--ranging from books to clothing--that date back 10,000 to 12,000 yearsto the Paleo-Indian Period.

"People tend to look at the North Shore and say, `There's a white, wealthy place,'" said Klein, an Evanston resident since 1977. "Not Evanston. This is a diverse community that likes to celebrate its diversity."

"Our diversity has been a long-term thing," said Neal Ney, director of the Evanston Public Library and a resident for nearly a decade. Evanston has had an African-American population since before the Civil War and a significant African-American community since the 1920s."

The town is developing more ways to serve its diverse population.

For example, Kent and others have been working during the past few years to convert a vacant three-story apartment building at 1817 Church St. into Evanston's Black American Heritage House.The part-museum, part-community center would celebrate black history from a local and international perspective and provide a computer laboratory for neighborhood children to do research.

"We need to celebrate Evanston's diversity and show that Evanston is unique," said Kent, who hopes to have a working office operating out of the building by June and the rest of the facility open by summer of next year. "In my ward, for instance, we have the poorest of the poor, the middle class and the fairly wealthy, and everyone is within walking distance of each other."

That diversity also helps bolster Evanston's strong cultural offerings, said Harmon Greenblatt, the director of the Evanston Arts Council.

"This is a community interested in the arts because of the mix of people we have here," he said. "This is not a bedroom community and the people who live and work here demand high-quality arts activities.

"And they have them. For its size and the number of people living here, there's a good number of theater companies, two orchestras, numerous art galleries plus all the activities found at Northwestern University."